We tend to take it for granted that blue jeans were invented by Levi Strauss, who made work pants for the miners of the California Gold Rush. It's true that Strauss designed tough work pants with rivets, but the blue denim they were made of had already been worn by working class people in Italy for at least a couple of hundred years! We know this because of ten paintings by an unidentified Renaissance painter known only as the “Master of the Blue Jeans.” This painter depicted a family of working class people clad in denim, with a white weft and blue warp, the same as the jeans we wear today. The warp threads were dyed with indigo, which brought the price of blue fabric down considerably after it began to be imported from India.
The Master of the Blue Jeans is the subject of a new exhibition at Galerie Cenesso in Paris opening May 16. Read up on the history of blue denim and see two of the paintings from the mysterious Master of the Blue Jeans at Smithsonian.
(Image source: Galerie Canesso)
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